Many years ago, when students wanted or needed assistance with a book of literature that was assigned as reading material for a class, there weren’t too many options. Study groups were one choice. Another alternative was to go to the public library and search the card catalogue for information pertaining to the novel. Then there were “Cliff’s Notes” books—these were shortcut guides that were available for many popularly-assigned novels.

But, aside from those options, that was it. And none of those choices was really a perfect solution. So, students had to read the assigned novels—which, of course, was the teacher’s intention…and which is what the student should have done.

Now, though, with all of the data on the internet, any novel assigned by a teacher likely has a plethora of information available. All a student would have to do is type the name of the novel into any search engine and he would find several results, many of which would probably tell him anything he needed to know about the novel. Many students could easily get through a class without even reading the assigned novel.

This is rather worrisome. Yet there is no real way to prevent this from happening—at least not without parental involvement.

Because pretty much everything is accessible on the internet—and because students know this—parents need to be aware of what their kids are doing on the internet, as well as aware of what their homework assignments are. Parents need to make sure that their kids are reading, rather than attempting to get away with finding information about the novels on the internet.

There may be a small number of kids who would try to avoid reading assigned novels; however, if parents get involved in homework assignments, this will not be an option for any student.